No Gray Areas

JUNE 1999 - The sight of a ground steward retrieving a stump from one of the many unruly spectators who invaded the pitch last week in England was a sight not with out irony. The camera-loaded cricket stump is worth 6,000 pounds and an easy thing to steal. The steward who got the stump back just in the nick of time, simply secured it and that was that. I couldn’t help thinking that had our cops been deployed in the same situation, being the great cricket watchers that they are, the errant thief might still be locked up somewhere, or worse, bumped off in that increasingly grisly dramas the police call ‘encounters.’ There have been so many of them recently.

It is very clear that the final word on crime solving is to eliminate the ‘suspects’ without too much delay. The frightening ‘logic’ (I can’t think of any other word) is to arrest, judge and execute in that order. Sometimes even that lopsided order is not observed. In most countries of the world, and not necessarily the civilised ones, you turn to the police without thinking, without worry, but in Pakistan, their mere sight makes frightens most people. Living their lives with criminals has made them bigger criminals. It is a strange infection that now afflicts the force, from top to bottom, the pious sermons of the sanctity of law and devotion to duty notwithstanding.

Last week a young man, a friend’s nephew, came out of his office in the evening and was getting into his car, when a mobile squad (another frightening sight) materialised and asked him for his papers. These he immediately produced and were scanned – just a routine number since most cops cannot read. These sadly were in order. So they asked for the driving license. It was then that the young man realised it was still in his wallet that he had forgotten in his office. This he shared with the cops and said he would fetch it right away; in any case he needed his wallet. The cops said that the important thing was that he did not have the license on him. When he argued that neither was he driving. The car in fact was parked. Even the engine was not running. The argument evoked the simple answer that the police are now famous for. He was shoved into the car and driven off to the station. There the ordeal began.

Some hours later, he managed to call his uncle and after a spate of phone calls, including the DIG (oh you need the very top officials for something as small as not having your license before entering your parked car), the shaken young man was plucked out of the den. He was then sent on a round of offices and petty officials, signing papers here and depositing them elsewhere, paying fines here and getting receipts elsewhere. Between the offices, he shunted for hours, cajoling, appealing and finally getting his papers back. He had committed no crime, but the treatment was clearly the kind reserved for the more frequent visitors of the police stations. That he was not hurt, slapped, abused or tortured is of course the brilliant silver lining on this sorry episode. In the end, everyone told him that he was indeed lucky, no, blessed to have made it without harm and lighter by Rs.1, 000 only.

This is the lighter side of the daily grind which common citizens of this nuclear power face. Most have no contacts with the powers that be, most are not equipped to handle the complicated jargon, paperwork and procedural assault that is handed out by those who owe their jobs to you and who are there to protect and guide you. I recall a time when the police ‘image’ (surely a great contradiction in terms) was under fire and a jingle was thought to be the answer to all their woes. In the film that was dutifully drummed out daily aimed at an amused and increasingly irritated public, a policeman helps an old man across the road. Great shot except most people said that once the cameras had stopped rolling, it was quite likely that the policeman must have robbed the old man and kicked him into the gutter. The police have simply eradicated the four killers of the Income Tax Commissioner. This is not the doing of the escort party. Orders such as these must come from the highest quarters. Those who were carrying them out were simply following orders. They will most probably receive commendations for doing an excellent job. Even the most heinous crimes are brought to trial and an established procedure followed, but even writing these lines is laughable. What procedure ?

We have simply degenerated faster than even our worst critics would have wished it upon us. We have not waited for a massive external force to wipe us out and rob us of any values that we might have had. We have simply turned inwards and impaled ourselves on our own weapons. As we have butchered each and every, pale and sick institution, we have further descended into a state that one cannot even call ‘animal’ because it is insulting to the animals. We are somewhere else and since sermons are a waste of time, this one too shouldn’t descend into another one. In all this, the few voices of hope are lost in the louder chorus of the bigots, the bandits and the breakers of law. Thus, Hina Jilani is charged with a murder, which the other side committed. Najam Sethi is in detention while a mock game of whose jurisdiction he is placed under, has been staged before the nation and the Supreme Court has lost its eyesight and its head the same day. In this scenario, why should the sight of the defenders of your freedom killing you pointblank cause any surprise at all ? In Pakistan, there are no longer any gray areas. White is black and black has turned white.